Curated playlist
Recipients of the Air Force Distinguished Service Medal
- James StewartJames Stewart gave away his only competitive Academy Award. He won Best Actor for the 1940 romantic comedy The Philadelphia Story, then handed the statuette to his father, who set it in the window of the family hardware store in Indiana,…
- James McDivittJames McDivitt flew his 145th combat mission in Korea two hours after the armistice was signed. The war was technically over. He flew anyway. That timing captures something essential about the man. He was not someone who stopped mid-task.…
- Stuart RoosaStuart Allen Roosa orbited the Moon 34 times, alone, while his two crewmates walked on the surface below. No one was watching him through a television camera. No one was broadcasting his name. Alan Shepard and Edgar Mitchell were getting…
- Buzz AldrinBuzz Aldrin set foot on the Moon at 03:15:16 on the 21st of July 1969 (UTC), nineteen minutes after Neil Armstrong first touched the surface. His first words, spoken into the silence of the lunar landscape, were simply: "Beautiful view."…
- David ScottDavid Randolph Scott was born on the 6th of June 1932 at Randolph Field, near San Antonio, Texas. His middle name came directly from that base, a fitting detail for a man whose identity would be shaped at every turn by the places and…
- Samuel C. PhillipsSamuel C. Phillips was a general who flew fighters over occupied Europe, helped design the missiles that defined the Cold War, and then ran the program that put Americans on the Moon. Not bad for the son of an electrician from…
- James IrwinJames Benson Irwin told his mother, when he was about 12 years old, that he wanted to go to the Moon and might be the first person to do so. He was wrong about the first part. On the 30th of July 1971, Irwin became the eighth human being…
- William AndersWilliam Anders took what many consider the most consequential photograph in human history, and he did it almost by accident. On the 24th of December 1968, the Apollo 8 spacecraft emerged from behind the Moon for its fourth orbit, and…
- Charles DukeCharles Duke was 36 years and 201 days old when he stepped onto the Moon on the 21st of April 1972, making him the youngest person ever to walk on another world. That record has never been broken. He arrived at a site called the Descartes…
- Thomas P. StaffordThomas Stafford was born on the 17th of September 1930, in Weatherford, Oklahoma, a small town that would later name an airport and a museum after him. At 14, he climbed into a Piper Cub for his first flight. That single hour in the air…